I Quit Saying Mean Things To Myself For 7 Days And This Is What Happened

The other day, as I was wandering around the house, dropping things and muttering "stupid, stupid, stupid" under my breath, it occurred to me that it would be more productive (and nicer) to speak kindly to myself. How much more energy would I have if I were firmly on my own side?

Then I did a little research and became convinced that using a kinder inside voice was worth a try, at least for a week. One meta-analysis found that positive self-talk boosts athletic performance; another series of studies showed that changing the way people talk about themselves to themselves, makes it easier for them to regulate their feelings—even for people with social anxiety.

(On just one-quarter acre of land, you can produce fresh, organic food for a family of four—year-round. Rodale's The Backyard Homestead shows you how; get your copy today.)

This last bit grabbed my attention. I'm an anxious person, although that anxiety is by no means limited to social situations. A short list of the things that make me anxious includes politics, health (my own and other people's), heights, driving, being driven, making plans, keeping plans, embarrassing myself in public, and failing to meet any and every obligation. As my 8-year-old nephew once told me, "Yeah, you're afraid of a LOT of things."

Not only am I afraid of a lot of things, I struggle with how to deal with the fear. Put me in a difficult situation, and my brain tries to cheer me up by gently suggesting that everything is my fault. It's like a mental version of Clippy—everyone's least favorite relic of the early word processing age—pops up and asks, "You seem to be dealing with something that's hard. Would you like to remember that time you wet your pants in the first grade, and tried to cover it up by turning to your classmate and saying, 'Smells like somebody wet their pants,' as if that would hide the puddle under your chair?"

I would not like to remember that, Clippy, but thank you for your help.

The good news is that therapy has taught me a few tricks. My favorite is a cognitive-behavioral technique: When Clippy pops up, I picture a stop sign. I keep picturing it until he goes away. It works about half the time (I'll take it!). To boost my chances of managing my mental health traffic during my weeklong ban of negative self-talk, I decided to try a two-part method:

1. Use the stop sign.

2. Start each day by listing five things I like about myself, in order to replace that negative self-talk with some positive. This was a suggestion from a friend of mine who perpetually radiates tranquility, as if she just got back from a spa or a life-changing trip across the world.

I did this for 7 days, and by the end, I had a lot more insight into why I engage in negative self-talk in the first place, and why it's important to dial that way back. Here's what I learned.

I say mean things to myself a lot.
The first day, I had to picture that stop sign at least 10 times...before noon. I'd known I beat myself up too much, of course, but I had no idea that it was such a constant stream. I was a little embarrassed, to be honest. I then had to remind myself not to add this realization to my internal tally of my imagined faults.

Finally, I remembered the second part of my plan and made a list of things I like about myself. I will not share this list with you, because it is embarrassing, and there's always the danger of replacing negative self-talk with positive online narcissism, but let's just say that the first one was, "I'm a good person" and the last one was "I like my eyebrows." That will give you some idea of the range—the absurdity of making a list and saying it out loud probably helped as much as remembering my finer qualities.

Negative self-talk is a way of asserting control over the uncontrollable.
The biggest surprise was how uncomfortable I felt once I stopped defaulting to self-criticism. Without this bad habit, there was a big hole in my routine—what would I do now to get a break?

The question, of course, was why on earth anyone would miss thinking bad things about herself. After some hard thinking (and many stop signs), I determined that it was a way of feeling like I was in control of the situation. If everything is my fault, then I must be in control of everything, right? Wrong. Whoops.

When I couldn't blame myself, I had to look for real causes.
Halfway through my week of not being a jerk to myself, I had a small episode of hypochondria, by which I mean that I sobbed for 3 hours while frantically Googling worst-case scenarios that could occur during a routine medical procedure. After the first hour, my husband gently asked me if I was allowed to go into a Google spiral during my experiment.

"Yes," I hissed immediately. And then, after a moment, I said, "OK, it's probably not ideal. But I'm not beating myself up over anything—just freaking out because I can't perform all of my own medical tests and treatments, including filling my own teeth and doing my own eye exams."

"OK, well, maybe walk away from the Internet for a while," he suggested.

And I did. I also thought about what he said and realized that I sort of agreed with him: It does count as being mean to yourself to entertain the worst-case scenario all the time. Better to look for the actual fear, and ask if it's reasonable. In this case, it was highly unlikely that my doctor would hurt me, laugh at me, or find anything terrible. I was focusing on the outliers, and ignoring the bulk of the data.

Changing the habits of a lifetime is exhausting.
My week felt as draining as if I'd taken up CrossFit. The good news: thinking more positively (or at least, less negatively) made me feel better. That first morning, I thought I'd have to take a week off of work to constantly envision a stop sign, but by the end, it was second nature, and now I'm pretty committed to keeping it going. What's the worst that could happen? (STOP. Don't answer that.)

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Prevention participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.